Genealogy - Grits from Grandpa

 

Wade's Mill in Raphine, VA

The boyhood home I grew up in sat on a quarter acre lot in a subdivision.  When I moved out -- I bought a quarter acre lot with a small house on it.  After selling that place - I bought another quarter acre lot in a subdivision with an average-sized home. My owned footprint has never been more than a quarter acre.

Many of my ancestors, however, have owned considerable amounts of land. Some of the poorest held a hundred and sixty times as much land as I ever have. Some of the richest have owned forty thousand times as much. Of course, there's a reason for the expression "Land rich, cash poor." And it's for that reason that my branch of the family no longer has land as an asset. 

Nonetheless, I remain fascinated by the lands they owned, worked, or traversed. This next series of blogs will be about family land.

In May of 2025, I visited the region where my McCown ancestors settled in the American colonies.  Like so many Scotsmen coming from Northern Ireland in the mid-1700s, that portion of my family settled in the Valley of Virginia in what was called the Borden Tract. While there, my wife and I visited Wade's Mill that has been in Raphine, Virginia since 1750. As soon as I saw it, I knew there was a possibility my ancestors had seen that mill in its earliest days.

My fifth great-grandfather, Francis McCown, had imported himself at Orange County, Virginia in 1740 -- though he already had property in the Beverley Tract as early as 1739. By 1743 he owned over 700 acres in the Borden Tract.  Over half of that was a plantation that bordered the property of Joseph Kennedy. 

Francis' Property bordering Joseph Kennedy's Property

Joseph and Francis both served in the militia formed by the community and certainly would have known each other. I can say with reasonable confidence that Francis visited and did business with the Kennedys at this mill for a time.

There remains speculation about the maiden name of Francis' wife, my fifth great grandmother, Margaret. Many genealogists have assumed her maiden name was Patterson and that she was the daughter of John Patterson and Agnes Moffett Patterson. Clearly, there was a close relationship to the Pattersons as Francis was named executor of John's will and one of Francis and Margaret's children was named Agnes.

The name Patterson -- and the possible connection -- is of special interest here because in 1906 a mill structure was moved from further down Hays Creek to be used as a barn. The mill was called the "Old Patterson Mill".

I can't imagine embarking across the ocean to claim land in a wilderness. I can't imagine transforming over 700 acres of that wilderness into farmland. I can't imagine having to defend it from other peoples who had different ideas about land ownership. It is so far removed from 20th and 21st-century suburban life. 

But today, I can go visit the region on the planet where Francis invested his time. I can enjoy grits ground on the same stone that ground his wheat and barley. I can stand in the place where he had conversations about Native American actions, the English in the east, settlement expansion and needs, and the wolf problem. These things I can imagine.

Genealogy - Torrents of Tragedy

J. C. Terry Estate Appraisement 1882

I recently discussed in this blog the tragedy associated with an uncle, Cecil McCown, who died of typhoid in 1892. His mother, Henrietta, based upon her letters, grieved the loss of Cecil greatly. She lived only six years after his death.

By the time Cecil died, Henrietta had lost her mother when she was eleven years old. She had also lost several siblings before she was forty, including a half-sister who was only twelve-years-old.  But I'm getting ahead of myself, because the central character for this story is her father, James Coleman Terry.

The only piece of his life that I possess is a slip of paper noting that my great-great grandfather, Monroe, was the executor of his estate in a Notice of Appraisement.

James is an interesting ancestor. He is one of my third great-grandfathers. In researching his life, I've come to believe that I may not have really liked him too much.  And, yet, I find myself struck by the number and magnitude of tragedies that he faced.

James was born in Virginia to Thomas and Lucy Terry in either Buckingham or Amherst, VA. James' father had settled there after the Revolution.  Thomas had been a guard at Albemarle where William Robinson had served as a Lieutenant. A relationship between the two of them apparently was struck. 

I suspect, though, I haven't yet proven, that Thomas was quite good at guarding and was put in William's employ after the war to help manage his security needs on his plantation. Whatever the circumstances, the relationship developed more as time passed -- because Thomas had mostly sons and William had mostly daughters.  Four of Thomas' six children would marry four of William's seven children. Thomas supplied three sons for the marriages and William provided three daughters. James was one of those sons.

Something happened after James' father-in-law, William, died. James was one of the administrators of his estate. He was in a lawsuit brought by his father, Thomas, for debt. William had died in 1825, but the settlement was still lingering in 1830. By then James had moved to Cabell, Virginia (that became West Virginia), maybe because of his disputes with his father. 

In Cabell he became involved in local politics. In 1833 he was acting as a supervisor of elections along with an election's commissioner, William Jenkins, who may have been the father of Confederate General Albert Gallatin Jenkins and owner of the Green Bottom Plantation. This possible connection is reinforced in a 1961 obituary of James' granddaughter, Rose Pocahontas "Honta" Clark, which states "During the Civil War, Mr. Terry was overseer of the Albert Gallatin Jenkins estate." Family legend says James transported slaves down the Ohio to Kentucky just before West Virginia was formed. Being cognizant of local politics he would have certainly known the inevitable was coming. He also had connections for River transportation. One of his sons, Robert, was a clerk on a steamboat and another of his sons, Logan, was an Engineer on a steamboat. Like I said, "I may not have really liked him too much."

Though he may have been overseeing the plantation at Green Bottom, his property ownership was in Lawrence County, OH.  As early as the 1840 census he was counted in Lawrence County seemingly with his first wife, Sarah, and seven children.

Between 1840 and 1843, Sarah, his first wife had disappeared.  It is most probable that she died - but no death record has been located for her.  James remarried in 1843 to Harriet Wakefield. A few years later, whether related to his duties as an auditor for the county or not, he was charged with Assault and Battery. It was apparently true -- because he plead guilty. The plea was premature, though, because the court determined the magistrate had no jurisdiction and had failed to identify when, where, or even upon whom the assault had occurred.  Since he had already plead guilty, they charged him a $15 fine.

By 1860 things seem to be going well for James.  He was running a farm, he may have been overseeing the Green Bottom Plantation, and his children were doing well for themselves. Within six years - all of this would fall apart.

First, in February of 1860 his son, William died of consumption. Then in January of 1863, his twelve-year-old daughter, Eliza died of diphtheria. In September of the same year, his son Benjamin, died from wounds at the Battle of Chickamauga. 

Benjamin was a Union soldier with the 6th Ohio. If the sale of the slaves downriver were true, then there was complication within the family. Or James lived a complex and divided life - supporting the institution of slavery because he profited from it and supporting the desire for the States to be reunited. It is also possible that he was estranged from a son, who opposed the ideals of the Confederacy -- then he lost him in that tragic war. Less than two years later, that son who was a successful steamboat engineer died of consumptions in his parents' home. He, too, had served with the 6th Ohio. Then a year later, in August of 1866, his son, Robert died.

James had sired five sons and only one remained. His wife, Harriett, though the step-mother of those sons was so distraught that she is listed as an invalid in the 1870 census. She had recovered by the 1880 census, then in 1881, James' last son, Patrick, dies on 3 July 1881 having drowned at the Memphis Wharf.

James was in his late seventies.  It was too much.  James died four months later.

When Cecil died in 1892, Henrietta wrote of grief that hollowed her out. She had learned that sorrow early, and she had watched it consume her father before it reached her. James Terry’s life was marked by choices I question and tragedies I can hardly imagine. Henrietta held the memory and carried the scars of both. In piecing their stories together, I can feel the grief -- though faintly -- more than a century later.

 

Genealogy - Generational Tragedy

 

Lewis Edward McCown with Cousins

Tragedies are different than setbacks. They are not simply the experiencing people we love, live and die of natural causes. They are those events that for some reason feel singled out because they are unexpected and notably unfair.

Sometimes tragedies in life are single events that individuals suffer for a short time then heal. Other tragedies leave scars that families struggle to heal from. Still other families seem to have unrelated tragedies that pile up on the generations.

In the last tragedy blog, I looked at Robert McCown, my great-grandfather's brother. Robert died in a prison fire in 1930 when his only son, Lewis Edward McCown, was seven years old.  Lewis's mother, Mary, had been previously married to Ova Dunfee and had a son, Ray, who was seven years older than Lewis.

Lewis with his older Stepbrother, Ray

When Ova was only eleven, in 1907, he was injured when he was struck by an automobile in Huntington, WV while he was riding his bicycle. This incident wasn't a tragedy, but it was notable because of how early it was in the history of automobiles.  (The first recorded pedestrian / automobile accident in the was in London in 1899.) Ova died, though, when he was only twenty-three -- leaving a widow and a three-year old boy. 

Ova's widow married Robert McCown two years later. Lewis was born the next year. Sometime between 1922, when Lewis was born, and 1930 when Robert died, Mary and Robert divorced. Robert was unable or unwilling to provide financial support for his family after the divorce. Lewis, therefore, grew up in a divided, difficult, and depressed (financially) household. When he was seventeen, he was living with his grandmother, Mary Ellen McCown, and Aunt Margaret Eaton in Athalia, OH.

Judging from surviving photographs and discussions about Lewis by my grandfather, the extended family was part of Lewis' life.  He posed with photos with his first cousin, Carlos Stone, Jr. and his second cousin, Robert "Bobbie" Wylie, all of whom were born within a year of one another. Carlos had lost his mother, Elizabeth McCown Stone, to illness when he was only three. He moved to Springfield, OH with his father - though he did come back to Lawrence County, OH to marry.

Like all young men across America, Bobbie and Lewis joined the military during the height of World War II. Carlos likely did, too - though I know no details. Lewis, though, saw terrible and historic things.  

Lewis was a Water Tender in the engine room on a large naval vessel [a Landing Ship, Tank (LST)] that delivered tanks, trucks, and other logistical equipment onto the beaches at the littoral front of military operations. These were used repeatedly during the war.  Lewis was an LST crewman at Salerno on his 21st birthday in 1943, at Anzio in January 1944, and on that fateful D-Day in Normandy a few months later in June. In total he would have witnessed the loss of six LSTs during the three operations.

Lewis' Navy Photo

Despite the danger, Lewis returned home in January of 1946 and married Edna Martin the same month. Three years later, on 30 July 1949, Lewis was killed in an automobile accident at the intersection of 8th Street and 8th Avenue in Huntington, WV. He left behind a young wife and two children under three.

Bobbie was not unaffected. He continued to live and work in Chesapeake, OH as a Chiropodist (now called a Podiatrist), but in 1968 while on a business trip to Wisconsin - he committed suicide. If reasons for his choice were revealed or known they have been lost to time. He left behind five children, three still living at home with the youngest only eight years old.

These tragedies, stretching from Robert to Lewis to Bobbie, do not form a tidy chain. They are scattered, unfair, and deeply human. Ecclesiastes reminds us that “time and chance happen to them all,” and perhaps that is the only thread that ties these events together. They were not clearly deserved, they were not predictable, and they were not connected — except in the lives of the people who had to endure them. Remembering them in its own way can help us to endure our own inconveniences and even tragedies we inevitably experience.

Genealogy - Bearing Tragedy

 

1908 Teddy Bear - then and now

Sometime around 1908 my grandfather, Herbert, received a Steiff mohair bear as a gift. Not long afterwards he was holding that bear tightly and proudly while standing aside his older brother, Robert, on the family's farm in southern Ohio. Robert watches on lovingly and protectively. 

Nearly 120 years later, that bear sits atop a shelf in my mother's apartment staring lovingly and protectively at its cub.

I know nothing about the circumstances of how the bears came to my grandfather. I don't remember seeing them when I visited my grandparents. I know that my father brought them back to the house after my grandfather died -- knowing my mother loved bears.

Those bears witnessed a family tragedy. The photograph of the boys is the last image I have of Robert.

The boys' father, Sylvester, married in 1888 and spent the early years blacksmithing, managing apple and peach orchards, and looking for work opportunities and stability along the Ohio River.  That stability didn't come. By 1910 he had found work down river but away from his home in Ohio, speculating on lumber tracts in Louisiana and helping to transition tree harvested forest properties to farms. This work, though, meant he was separated from his beloved wife and four children. 

He was still working in the timber industry in Louisiana when his oldest son, Robert, finished school. Robert probably joined his father in the work for a time. Robert wasn't yet old enough to be drafted into the World War so he could have had up to two years with his father. 

The opportunity to build his relationship with his father was a bright point.  Unfortunately, the remoteness and male dominated nature of the work made it ripe for over-consuming alcohol. Sylvester had certainly succumbed to it.  Robert followed.

 By the end of 1918, Robert was eligible for the draft. He went to Fort Thomas, KY.  No longer had he joined in September the Armistice was signed in November. Robert was then discharged as a recruit in December. He may have returned to the timber industry with his father, but if he did, it was short lived. His father died in October of 1919 of Cirrhosis of the liver -- a direct result of his alcohol consumption.

Robert's family moved in to live with his maternal grandparents, Robert and Betty Wiley in a large house in Athalia, OH. While he may have helped in the General Store that his grandfather owned, Robert was trying his hand supporting the growing need for automotive mechanics.

Wiley Home and General Store in Athalia, OH

Robert married, Mary Lewis sometime after February of 1920 and they had a son, Lewis Edward born in September of 1922. 

Either the mechanic work didn't pan out or the alcoholism overcame Robert. Robert's marriage dissolved and he was eventually incarcerated for non-support.

That is tragedy enough. But while serving time in the Ohio State Penitentiary, a fire erupted in the prison. Robert was among the over three hundred men who lost their lives in that fire.

My grandfather swore off alcohol completely -- not for religious reasons -- but because he witnessed the disease it caused his father and the devastation it brought to his big brother. 

He lost a brother but kept the bear, and he kept his vow. And in doing so, he carried forward not the darkness that consumed his father and brother, but the love that once shone in a young man’s protective gaze. The bear remains bearing witness to tragedy, memory, and devotion.

*****

Next time we will look at the tragedy that follows Robert's son, Lewis.

 

Genealogy - Tragedies Remembered

 

Great Flood of Marietta, OH 

March 1936

Families carry their tragedies quietly, often in letters, photographs, and half‑remembered stories.

In June, I told the story of an uncle, Cecil McCown, who died of typhoid when he was in his early twenties and full of hope and ambition.  The event clearly rocked the family at the time and resulted in family letters being preserved for over 130 years. I also told the story, The Club and the Ring, about a couple of traumatic childhood adventures of my own. 

Similarly, I have photographs that have survived scores of years to bear witness to a family tragedy.  The photo at the top of this blog is of my grandmother standing knee-deep in the flood waters of the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers at 216 South 6th Street in Marietta, Ohio.  While I remember her and my grandfather talking about floods in a general way -- shoveling mud out of homes -- I never knew the times, places, or circumstances.  With this photo in hand, I discovered my grandmother's sister and brother-in-law were living in Marietta (apparently on 6th Street) at the time of the Great Flood of Marietta in 1936. No doubt her memories of cleaning out flooded homes were anchored, at least in part, to this tragedy.

Ecclesiastes states:  "Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all." So, we can expect to experience some tragedy. For the survivors of tragedies they become the seeds of the stories they get to tell. As Bilbo was able to write, "There and Back Again, A Hobbit's Holiday" telling of his adventures encountering Gollum, discovering the Ring, and losing Thorin Oakenshield, Fíli and Kíli. 

In a few subsequent blogs, I'm going to stroll through preserved stories of ancestors and close cousins to tell the discovered stories of sadness, loss, and tragedy. 

The Secret to Happiness

Eastern Bluebird

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

These words were enshrined in the American Declaration of Independence. Of the three unalienable Rights that were explicitly called out we understand the right to life for living and breathing beings fairly well -- though there have been clear disagreements about at what stage those unborn who do not yet breathe should be afforded the right to life.

With respect to Liberty, we understand it well when it is personal liberty -- but too often fail to understand it adequately when self-restraint is required to permit others liberty in things we personally believe they should not do.

It seems, when Thomas Jefferson, wrote these words he believed himself to have a good grasp of these first two. He may have even believed that everyone would understand them the same and with the same intensity as he felt.

For the last one he clearly knew that happiness is elusive. He avoided saying that humanity has the unalienable right to be happy. Rather, he said we have to right to try to catch happiness and if you can catch it then hold on to it.

When I was a child, I wanted to catch a bird. I don't remember if it was my mom or dad -- but one of them said, "The secret to catching a bird is to put salt on its tail.  If you can put salt on its tail you can catch it.!" I thought, "Well, I can't get close enough with a saltshaker so maybe if I put salt on bread and threw it in the yard it would somehow immobilize the birds." (I guess I didn't in those exact words as "immobilize" was probably not in my vocabulary -- but that was my thought process.) Clearly, the plan didn't succeed, and it got some laughs from my dad.

The expression is a very old European one -- at least five hundred years. A variant of the Simple Simon nursery rhyme included the lines:

He went to catch a dicky bird, 

And thought he could not fail, 

Because he had a little salt

To put upon its tail.

If catching a bird is a metaphor for catching happiness, then the bluebird — the most elusive of them all — becomes the perfect symbol. 

 Even before Maurice Maeterlinck's L'Oiseau Bleu, there were allusions to a bluebird representing hope or renewal in Chinese and Native American folklore. If you have watched bluebirds for any time, you will note they are very alert. Chasing one to catch it would be fruitless. To catch one would require somehow alluring it and trapping it.

So, it is with happiness. While we have the right to pursue it the pursuit rarely catches the prey. Like the bluebird, we catch sight of happiness for a moment before it leaves us to entice someone else into the chase.

Since we might only catch the bluebird by traps and tricks -- perchance that is the way to capture happiness. 

When we pursue happiness in the common way -- we seek for ways to do things we want to do or that we believe we want to do. We go to amusement parks. We go fishing, camping, or golfing.  We get ourselves treated to some form of pampering, like spas or cruises. We sit down for a whole two hours with a good book. And, in those moments, we may experience calmness, laughter or exhilaration. In other words, in those moments we caught sight of the bluebird.

Conversely, when we experience unhappiness in the common way -- we find ourselves in situations we don't want to be in or doing things we just don't want to do. We have to pay taxes. We have to sit in the waiting room at a doctor's appointment. We have to work late even though we won't get approved for overtime. We have to take out the trash or wash the dishes. And in those moments, we experience frustration, annoyance, or pain. In other words, in those moments we not only don't see the bluebird, we wonder if we ever will again.

With those two observations we can conclude: "We do what we want, avoid what we don’t, and grudgingly do what we feel forced to do." Happiness comes from transforming the third category!

The Secret to Happiness is withing our grasp. With this truth we can lure and trap the bluebird. All we have to do is to ONLY do what we want to do and NEVER do anything you don't want to do -- and then we will be happy.  But, of course, that is unrealistic.  When we get off the cruise ship, we have to go back to work to pay for the fun we just had.

Remember though, we are going to trap the bluebird.  

The secret is reorienting the mind so that you WANT to do those things you feel forced to do or you find ways NOT to FEEL FORCED to do what you don't want to do. You must choose one of those paths for each thing you don't want to do. If you do you will have captured the bluebird of happiness.

It works. I have tried it. It isn't always easy to find reasons to want to do things I feel forced to do - but if I must do them or go through them then if I look, I can find value for me or for others in the experience. I can't kick the can down the road and say, "well, I don't feel forced to do this so I'm not gonna" when I know there will be a negative consequence for that choice later that I will REALLY not want to do or experience.

The bluebird stays longest not with those who pursue it, but with those who make a home where it wants to land.

"Hey! Bluebird. I'm not chasing you but please feel free to stay."

 

A Family of Chairs

Rural Ladderback Chair

Some time ago I wrote a blog about Genealogical Treasures. In it I mused over the various trinkets and treasures that my wife and I have become stewards of.  One of those treasures is this chair and its five siblings. The chair is nut colored very light weight but sturdy chair. Most likely it is made of Tennessee Hickory. 

I first encountered these chairs decades ago while enjoying a small dessert of peaches, angel food cake, and iced cream served to us on fine china in the Nashville apartment of Uncle Jack and Aunt Alma. (Aunt Alma was the sister of my father-in-law's grandmother.) We sat at a nicely placed dining room table in one of these chairs.

Jack and Alma later moved to Carthage, TN to a smaller apartment where they lived out their long lives. Jack and Alma had no children, so as the various household items and properties were settled my father-in-law inherited the chairs. A few years ago, he and my mother-in-law, too, downsized and no longer had room for the chairs, so they passed the chairs along to their daughter and by extension to me.

I immediately noticed that the chairs, though of the same pattern, were each unique. There was no maker's mark or factory uniformity. Every rung and slat was slightly different. They were clearly handmade.  

I asked my father-in-law about the history of the chairs. As he understood it, Jack's parents, Charles Gordon and Genie Craig, had them when they were setting up housekeeping soon after they married.

Through some genealogical digging, I discovered that Jack's parents were married in May of 1901. That would mean the chairs were probably obtained around 1901 or 1902 making them about 125 years old. 

The life of a chair is often harsh. They are sat on, leaned back in, dragged across the floors and if children are around -- climbed on, scrawled, and occasionally carve on. Ladder-back chairs, especially, wind up on porches growing weathered and worn. 

These chairs lived a charmed life. 

Charles and Genie were both in their thirties when they married and only had one child, Jack -- born in 1905.  With only one child around them with any frequency and no indoor pets in any of the homes they occupied -- they all look nearly as new as they appeared when they were first wrought from the hickory of Maury County, TN. 

Curiosity got the best of me.  Who made these chairs? Could I even find out?  

Of course, since they weren't signed, I could never know for certain - but I have a hunch.  Handmade chairs could have been purchased from local stores or from people you knew. So, I did a quick look through the census documents of Maury County, TN.  I suspected that the carpenter would have lived near either Charles or Genie - and since it was a household good, it would more likely have been near Genie.

Just one page before Genie and her family in the 1900 Census (84A Sheet #7, 7th District, Maury, TN) was a young man named Andrew Cummings who was six years younger than Genie listed as a Carpenter in the house of his father.

Maybe the newly married Gordon's purchased the chairs. Maybe young Andrew or his parents provided the chairs to them as wedding gifts. We can never know, but it is fun to imagine.

There is an interesting twist to this story.  These chairs came to my wife through her father's family. But his family was not the original owners of the chairs. The original owner was Genie Craig. Genie is the great-granddaughter of Joseph Matthews. Joseph is my fifth great grandfather - meaning that the original owner is my second cousin.

It is as if the chairs knew the story long before I did, and simply guided me toward it.